My name is Huckleberry Finn. If you’ve read a book called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, you already know about me. But if you haven’t, it doesn’t matter.
At the end of that book, my friend Tom and I found six thousand dollars, and each of us was allowed to keep half. Judge Thatcher invested the money for us, so Tom and I would never have to worry about not having enough money again.
I didn’t have a home, so the Widow Douglas took me in. She said she was going to civilize me. She made me wear new clean clothes, and sit at the table to eat my meals. But I missed the way I used to live, wearing my old rags and fixing my own supper.
The widow had a sister, Miss Watson, who was determined to teach me to spell. I couldn’t help wiggling around.
"Huckleberry, sit up straight!" she scolded me. "Why can’t you try to behave?"
All I could think about was how I wanted to get away. I needed a change, but I knew the widow and her sister would never understand, so I didn’t try to explain.
By the time I went up to my room for bed, I felt sad and lonesome. I sat in a chair by the window and looked out at the night. I heard an owl hooting and a dog howling. It sounded to me as if they were mourning for someone who had died. It scared me, and I started to tremble. Then a spider crawled up on my shoulder, and when I shook it off, it fell into my candle and burned up. I knew that killing a spider could bring me very bad luck, so to keep the bad luck away, I turned myself around three times while crossing my chest. But I still felt afraid, and I trembled even harder.
I sat there a long time until I calmed down. Finally, I heard the clock in the town of St. Petersburg strike 12 times. It was midnight. A twig snapped out in the darkness, and then I heard a little "Me-yow, me-yow," down in the yard. "Me-yow," I called back softly. Then I climbed out the window, onto the shed, and down to the ground. And sure enough, there was Tom waiting for me.
Tom and I tiptoed through the widow’s garden. As we passed the kitchen, I tripped over a root. Jim, Miss Watson’s black slave, was sitting by the kitchen door when he heard the noise.
"Who’s that?" he called out.
Then he came out into the garden and stood right between us. Tom and I stood completely still. Jim couldn’t see us in the dark.
"I know I heard something," Jim said. "I’m going to sit down here and listen until I hear that sound again."
Well, first my ankle and my ear started to itch, and then my nose. I felt as if I’d die if I couldn’t scratch, but if I did, Jim would know we were there. Just when I couldn’t stand it any more, we heard Jim snoring. He had fallen asleep!
Before we left, Tom played a trick on Jim. He crept over to Jim, took off his hat, and hung it on a branch. Tom said that Jim would think witches had moved his hat.
Tom and I went into town where Ben Rogers, Joe Harper, and two or three other boys were waiting for us. We rowed a boat about four kilometers down the Mississippi River, and came ashore.
There Tom led us to his secret cave, which had an entrance hidden by bushes. We lit our candles and crawled through a long passageway on our hands and knees. When we reached the cave, it was damp and cold.
"We’ll start a band of robbers called Tom Sawyer’s Gang," Tom said. "Everyone who wants to join must take an oath and write his name in blood."
Everyone agreed. Tom got out a piece of paper and wrote down the oath. It said that we had to promise to be loyal to the band and never tell its secrets. Anyone who told would be killed.
We all said it was a very good oath, and Tom said that he got the words for it from books about pirates and robbers. Then Ben said that he thought the families of the boys who told secrets should be killed too. So Tom added that to the oath.
Joe pointed out that I didn’t have a family. Tom replied that I had a father, but the others objected that he’d disappeared a long time ago. Finally, I said I was willing to give them Miss Watson to kill. Everyone agreed to that. Then we all stuck our fingers with a pin, and made a mark on the paper with our blood.
"Now," said Ben, "What is our gang going to do?"
"We’re going to wear masks and stop carriages on the road," Tom explained. "We’ll kill the people and take their watches and money."
It was getting very late, so we decided to meet again next week to decide which folks we would rob and kill. Then we all went home.
By the time I climbed in my window at the widow’s house it was almost dawn. My new clothes were covered with dirt and I was very tired.